286 MYSELF AND MY FRIENDS

spread out like sheltering wings Trees and shrubs
and lesser plants accompanied by little rivulets run
all the way down the mountain into the valley below
Whenever I went to the garden I would seek out Mr
Matthews, who has charge of it He is one of the old
Kew men—you find them all over the world, and
wherever you find them the gardens which they grow
always flourish I suppose that Sir Arthur Hill, the
Director of Kew, and the gardeners under him, having
succeeded so well in making plants grow there, can
make them grow anywhere Chief among the beautiful
plants that grow at Kirstenbosch are the silver trees, the
leaves of which are of a beautiful silvery white, they
glisten in the sun and dart about like white butterflies
in the breeze Cape Heaths of every imaginable colour
and flowering one or other of them all the year round
There are, too, the Brumas, which bear white flowers in
rounded heads on the tops of the branches I must have
something to remind me of the delightful hours I spent
in the garden I sought out Gwelo Goodman, whose
paintings of flowers I had already admired at Govern-
ment House, and begged him to paint some flowers
for me I showed him the Brumas, and he painted
them and did as well another smaller gem, a Cotyledon,
all silvery grey with its flower branches like candelabras
bearing coral-pink bell-shaped flowers There were
visits to Government House where their Excellencies
the Earl of Athlone and Princess Alice made us welcome
Wherever we went we heard their praises They had
made friends with and were loved by everybody We
visited General Hertzog in the beautiful home which
Cecil Rhodes had built at Groote Schuur, and the
General insisted on us going to see him again when we
returned, in order to tell him what our visits to the
different parts of South Africa would have taught us
I sat next to General Smuts at lunch, and not a word
did he speak to me until I chanced to turn to him
and say something about poetry "Ah, that,*' he said,
"that's what matters I am always happy if I have